This is an important post:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/9/questions-to-ministers.html
Questions relating to the work of the Met Office on global warming are being put in the UK parliament, and the Met Office is refusing to answer them. Parliamentary Questions have a history going back centuries. Giving answers, or giving a valid reason for not answering, is required. The stand-off is yet to be resolved.
The Parliamentary Question that started this was put by Lord Donoughue on 8 November 2012. The Question is as follows.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government … whether they consider a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 to be significant. [HL3050]
Doug wonders what sort of guy the MET Office chief is. This might help him get the measure:
Met Office Chief John Hirst: Ignoring his own scientists – promoting alarmism
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
This is an important issue and I’ve, reluctantly, moved Lady Thatcher off my front page to cover it.
I know the Lords doesn’t have the final say but if just a little bit of reality creeps into those minds, it’ll have an effect in the future.
Have a look at this from the Met office stats person
http://dougmcneall.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/some-more-correspondence-with-doug-keenan/
Apparently the question: ‘is the rise in global temprature since 1880 statistically significant?’ is not the right question to ask.
Much glad for your supportive words on the Bishop Hill post. I had seen your post from October, which indicates a lot about Hirst. According to a recent interview in the Financial Times, Hirst was brought in to commercialize the work of the Met Office, and he does not understand the science. See too Hirst’s Wikipedia biography.
@ P Dean — See my comment there, responding to that.
The question at issue here is “whether a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 (is considered) to be significant”, and the answer that seems to be causing the problem is “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant.”
I don’t see anything wrong with this answer. Almost a degree of warming over the last 100 years or so (according to HadCRUT4) has to be considered significant.
But this doesn’t mean that “the temperature rise could not be reasonably attributed to natural random variation—i.e. global warming is real”, as Doug Keenan claims. All it says is that the Met Office are confident that temperatures have risen, which they have. It tells us nothing about what they think caused the rise.
I think maybe the wrong question is being asked.
There does not appear to be any updated to this story.
Has the Met office got away with ignoring the House of Commons?
[Reply] The wheels grind slowly in the civil service.